• 10 articles

A Father’s Final Lesson

This article was previously published in Sword & Spade Magazine. John Waldorf discovered what is most real about his inheritance. Eugene Waldorf died just four days after his 84th birthday. As I write this, most of my family is arriving home after gathering to celebrate the first anniversary of his passing. Besides being married to my mo...

03 16 2023

The Hope the Holy Family Gives an Unholy Dad

It’s the New Year!  Woohoo!  Did you do anything?  Make a resolution?  Look at every other Catholic website that says “Don’t Make a Resolution!” and wonder what’s next? In all the gloriousness of Christmas and the New Year, did you notice the Feast day sandwiched in between?  The Feast of the Holy Family—the first Sunday after Chr...

01 21 2019

Loving God Above All

We were reminded on a recent Sunday of one of the greatest commandments from the Gospel of Mark: “You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Men, this is difficult to truly embrace.  When you think about it realistically, there are so many things and people that w...

11 25 2018

How Family Life Conquers Chaos and Death

The other day I was stuck in traffic on the highway and I happened to look down at the grass growing in the median between the two sides of the highway. The beauty of the living grass softly swaying in the wind brushed a chord in my soul. This was not any special grass, it wasn’t even particularly aesthetically pleasing, it was just there, and al...

06 20 2018

Why I Still Farm My Family’s Land

Folks that have had the fortune to find themselves sitting under the shade tree at my family’s farm might have a hard time explaining to those who haven’t what takes place there.  For those who have, they always come back. People I sat with as a child, now bring their grandkids there.  Out of state grandkids bring their grandparents (who are...

06 14 2018

How Work Brings Meaning Back to Family Life

Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo is often called the beginning of contemporary Catholic social teaching because it was the first encyclical to deal with the unprecedented disruptions of traditional societal order due to the industrial revolution.  For fathers, Rerum is one of the most important encyclicals of the modern era, because in it Pope Leo recogniz...

04 14 2018

Hitting Baseballs While Facing Unemployment

My four brothers and I frequently share texts. Most involve inane observations or commentary on some sporting event, but they are fun and help keep a small connection going since we live our own lives in five separate states. Brian sent a text the other day that made me stop and think a bit. In it, he stated “Three of the best feelings in the wor...

03 22 2018

Don’t Let Liars Tell the Story in Your Home

A decade or so before I was born, my parents met a new guy in town. He could not move around well or take care of himself, but he was a gifted storyteller. My family was so enamored with him they actually invited him to live with us so we could take care of him. From the start, he was accepted as a member of the family. Everyone in town talked abo...

03 16 2018

Know Thyself: Reconnect With Your Ancestry

The singer Bono famously remarked (although not for the first time) that America is an idea. America is not founded upon a particular ethnicity and at first was not bounded by any particular geography. It was an idea, or even the possibility, of a particular kind of freedom – the freedom to begin again and to be whatever you want to be. Now we...

03 16 2018

Catholics Don’t Go to Mass Because Dad Doesn’t

Americans are not doing a very good job of observing the 3rd Commandment. Over the past 50 years, Sundays have been filled with youth sports, professional sports, shopping, work and just about everything else… except for Mass. In 1965, 55% of American Catholics attended Sunday Mass each weekend. Recent surveys show that only 23% of American Ca...

03 09 2018

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